


California Dreaming

by chucks_prophet



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst and Humor, Artist Castiel, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Family Issues, Hopeful Ending, Humor, Law Student Sam, Plot Twists, Sam Leaves for Stanford, Sam Winchester at Stanford, Stanford University
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-13
Updated: 2016-02-13
Packaged: 2018-05-20 05:20:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5992987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chucks_prophet/pseuds/chucks_prophet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam poises a finger to the bridge of his upper lip. Invasion of privacy, defamation… “And fighting words.”</p><p>A couple rows in front of him is the girl he ran into in the hallway a week ago, dressed as formal as ever in a night-colored button-up with a beige collar and cuffs. Her hair is pulled in a brown bun tight enough to leave a frat boy’s head spinning. She wears little makeup, and she’s as pretty as she is outspoken.</p><p>“Thank you, Eileen. Next time don’t interrupt someone’s learning, capishe?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	California Dreaming

**Author's Note:**

> Listen, I love Jess as much as the next fan, but these two put the T in OTP.

The Greyhounds are worse than he remembers.

Someone dying is a vast understatement. The smell is more or less like a cellulite-stricken herbivore stripped of its eco-friendly skin and turned inside out. The body is stored in the AC, giving it a rhythmic rattle: the song of the old and dying poor— _shh plop clunk, shh plop clunk_.

At least the chairs aren’t completely uncomfortable—that is if you don’t mind being cattle to an invasive metal prodding. Not even the cluster of crimsons and oranges filtering through the questionably stained window can distract him from the putrid taste in his mouth. Wishful thinking it’s the graying man in a bullet-holed jacket next to him hogging the view, but it’s too acidic and stings with the familiarity of acrimony.

Finally, the bus comes to a screeching stop. Passengers deluge the aisle like a tsunami before kissing the coveted shore. The bus driver—a black woman with hair as frazzled as the expression she dons—is left to narrow her chestnut eyes in the rearview.

“You gonna stand there like a string bean or am I gonna have to give you the boot?”

Sam suppresses a grin. She reminds him of Missouri. Not the state, but the person. “Sorry, ma’am, got lost in my head’s all,” he says, rising to his feet. The weight of his backpack gives him an extra push.

“You better strap that thing on tight or you’ll lose it next time,” she quips dryly.

Before he can take anything in as he steps off—other than _fresh air_ —he feels something poking his thigh. Reaching into his back pocket, he retrieves a half of a photograph.

It’s slightly diluted from the puddle in Albuquerque, but his dad’s bloodhound stare hasn’t lost its sting. He’s wearing his brown fleece to match his eyes and stands in front of their childhood home—a two-story, sickly green structure that has more color than him.

Pulling out the other half, he immediately recognizes his mom’s famous interrupting finger by her blood-red nail polish. Behind that is Sam, eighteen years his junior, nestled like a chubby baby bird in the arms of a boy with blonde hair akin to Shaggy from _Scooby Doo_. He’s grinning like he just learned naptime’s cancelled for the rest of his life, not even noticing Sam’s pineapple leg slipping through his fingers.

Sam sighs, pocketing the memory as he slings the other strap of his bloated backpack over his shoulder and starts walking. How did his life become so complicated?

***

The hallways are as narrow and white as Sam is tall and wide, and the people are friendly granted most of them will be _extra_ friendly when they get their money-sodden hands on an Easy-Bake Oven.

All but one girl he quite literally runs into is primly dressed in a white button-up blouse and beige dress pants. She doesn’t even blink when he apologizes, just strides past him like he’s made of mothballs.

Sam scoffs and carries on down the hall. _So much for making friends._

Sooner than later, he’s at the doorstep of his future best friend _or_ enemy. He knocks twice for good measure. The door swings open, revealing a guy a good head shorter than him with bedraggled hair and a big gummy smile that unveils itself like a curtain after intermission. The cast: a shiny set of white teeth.

“You must be Sam. Come on in, make yourself at home,” he says, voice rougher than the pleasantness his tone has to offer. For once, Sam does as he’s told. “Ignore the smell; I’m working on a project.”

Sam laughs, “As long as it’s not sewer smell, I’m good.”

“Sewer? You must’ve come from the rural, _rural_ part of Kansas.”

“Nah, but the Greyhound’s toilets were enough to make me wanna go back,” he jibes, not quite matching the sincerity in his puberty-stricken voice. That’s when the smell hits him—too strong and intoxicating to be anything but wet paint.

“My name’s Cas,” the boy rejoins, chuckling. Sam’s eyebrows taper. That name is familiar, like a preloaded song on a flip phone. He turns his head, knowing how rude it is to stare. Cas gestures to two beds—one facing west, the other east. “I didn’t know which bed you wanted, so I waited to unpack…”

Cas stops, tensing as Sam nears the far side of the dorm. There’s a pullout couch, spared from long, horizontal streaks of bright pinks, yellows, and a blue just a shade lighter than Cas’s eyes by the tarp slung over the mattress. In the middle of the colorful chaos is an 18x24 canvas wearing the hues like a garish prom dress.

Either Cas isn’t immune to criticism like Sam or he’s lacking confidence in his work—which would be an abstract concept seeing there’s a dozen other canvases crowding his dresser and closet.

“Aren’t those the colors on the pansexual flag?”

As fast as sunset to sundown, Cas’s eyes alight with joy. “Yeah! Um, sorry, I know this is San Francisco, but you’re from the South and I’d just assumed—”

“It’s cool, man,” Sam says, holding up his hand as he starts to unpack. “And I’ll take the east side.” By the dirt underneath his fingernails, he managed to pack a week’s worth of clothes and his three-piece from sophomore year, now as wrinkled as the comforter beneath his weight. “So, how long have you been—?”

His thoughts are cut short as he spots a painting tucked behind Cas’s timeworn suitcase. This one is mortared in dark pinks, purples, and blues, and there’s something in the middle: a sketch of a nude male figure. The details are incredible, particularly in the face. If Sam wasn’t so homesick, he’d mistake it for— _no._ No way. “Who’s the, um, subject of that piece?”

Cas cranes his head behind him as a schoolboy smirk crosses his face. “My boyfriend, Dean. It’s a long-distance thing until he saves up enough money to come down.” Sam scoffs. Even 2,000 miles away, he hasn’t left Kansas. “What?”

“Nothing, that’s just a really good portrait of my brother.”

***

Sam’s grateful for his Intro to American Law class so he doesn’t have to think about the _un_ lawful things Dean’s sending to his roommate.

The class is fast-paced—like blink _once_ and you’ll miss a whole section. Fast-paced is good though, compared to the snail pace he was going at home.

“Winchester, what limitations bracket the first amendment?”

Sam peers up from his vigorous notetaking. Professor Cage is a man in his late forties with quick wit underneath needle-sharp hair and near-extinct eyebrows. He’s a tough grader, but Sam’s a hard worker. “Limitations of the first amendment include invasion of privacy and defamation.”

“And?”

Sam poises a finger to the bridge of his upper lip. _Invasion of privacy, defamation… “_ And fighting words.”

Sam's left awestruck: A couple rows in front of him is the girl he ran into in the hallway a week ago, dressed as formal as ever in a night-colored button-up with a beige collar and cuffs. Her hair is pulled in a brown bun tight enough to leave a frat boy’s head spinning. She wears little makeup, and she’s as pretty as she is outspoken.

“Thank you, Eileen. Next time don’t interrupt someone’s learning, capishe?”

Eileen gives Sam a fractious onceover before turning around and nodding.

Sam makes a conscious decision to keep his head in his notebook the remainder of the class.

***

“You’re from _Kansas?_ Isn’t that basically like taking a trip downstairs and never surfacing again?”

Sam laughs, “More or less, yeah. There’s decent Wi-Fi, though.” He adds the last part for good measure, but Charlie, one of the more intellectual redheaded bookkeepers at Stanford, just gapes at him.

“In Hell or in Kansas?”

“Both, I guess.”

Charlie nods with her pointer finger on her chin. “Interesting. Not as interesting as finding out your roommate is dating your big brother, of course.”

Sam’s eyes widen to the size of two dry olives. Before he can properly react, he’s silencing her obnoxious laugh with his hand. “Oh my God, is there a new _compromise_ between California and Kansas or something?” he blurts in the gruffest rage-whisper known-to-man.

Charlie shrugs, amused as she leans back in a chair that emits just as much noise, “Nah, you’re just _great_ at choosing friends.”

“Yeah, well, can’t choose all of them.”

“What’s that mean—?”

Before Sam can rejoin, the devil walks in in high-heeled dress shoes. Today her hair matches her attitude: high strung, and a black skirt hugs her thighs like a koala bear hugs a eucalyptus. She’s at least three isles over, but Sam can practically smell the salt on her skin.

“Eileen Leahy,” Charlie states with a low whistle. “You’ve got _extreme_ taste in women, dude.”

Sam snaps his head back to Charlie. “What? No, there’s nothing—”

“Stow the crap; I can hear church bells going off in your head.”

“Bells?” Sam harrumphs, swallowing a nasty lump of anxiety, “None. Uh, no, there are no bells.”

Charlie derides the comment with a laugh, “Whatever you say, Law Boy. I gotta get back to work.”

As soon as Charlie disappears into the blur of the history section, Sam swings his head a few rows over. _Not stalking, concerned,_ he tells himself, even though concerned is a loose piece of the puzzle. Sure enough, Eileen’s furiously scanning the same book. She’s actually pretty cute, minus all the misplaced rage.

The Liberty Bell is the first thing he sees when he opens his own textbook.

***

Sam swears on his premature grave Professor Cage has it out for him—or has some erroneous belief Sam knows the answer to everything he went over _five minutes ago._

“The Executive Order 9981 signed by Truman in 1948 that ended segregation in the armed forces,” he answers, refraining from making it sound like a question even though there’s a giant question mark hanging over his head like a phantom menace. Cas kept him up all night with another one of his projects. He can still hear the slap of the strokes and taste the acrylic on his tongue.

“Professor, if I may,” a nagging voice chimes in. “One can argue the Brown Versus Board of Education case blew the United States wide open when it declared segregation in public schools unconstitutional. Even though it took place in 1954, it single-handedly overruled the Plessy versus Ferguson case of 1896, the first Civil Rights case in history.”

The Prof. just sighs, “Yes, I suppose, but Sam is correct. The first case that led to the Civil Rights Movement is Truman’s Executive Order because it was the first positive step toward equality.”

“But,” Eileen continues, gravel in her tone, “Truman’s Executive Order didn’t eradicate racism in the United States. Police brutality continues to divide our nation on a day-to-day basis—”

“ _Eileen,_ that’s enough—”

Eileen actually scoffs, “Point in case: The white alpha male trying to control the situation.”

The whole class is stunned into a long, awkward silence. A few students have their heads aimed like laser beams at Sam. But no beam is as stinging as Eileen’s just before Cage states, “You’re dismissed, Eileen.”

As if Sam’s not getting enough attention, he makes the impulsive decision to storm out of class. He shadows Eileen down the hallway until he can see the wrinkled folds on the back of her shirt. “Hey!” he shouts. Her response is the _click_ of her polished shoes on the tile. “I said hey,” he repeats gruffly, this time grabbing her shoulder and spinning her around faster than a carousal ride.

Seeing her face for first time up close, he expects a hell-hath-no-fury glare, but instead he’s faced with a very real, very _scared_ version of Eileen. Her mouth, for once, is pursed tight, unlike her wide chocolate eyes. Her hands are trembling, but they form a sharp movement followed by the twirl of her right finger, and that’s when Sam realizes.

 _I’m sorry,_ he signs with what little he knows, _I didn’t know—_

“No, you didn’t,” Eileen punctuates.

“See that’s what I mean,” Sam says, rage coming back to him like a slow-churning volcano. “Even when I apologize, you still don’t forgive me. I don’t know what I did to earn a spot on your shit list, but it’s really starting to—”

Eileen surges forward and captures his lips. It’s too chaste to turn into Mount Etna, but when she breathes into him, well, it’s enough to withdraw his argument.

***

The dial pad on the Gas N Sip’s payphone a few miles up the road is slick with precipitation, but it rings loud and clear. Sam clutches the phone tight as the dial tone cuts off.

“Hey, Dad, it’s me.”


End file.
